And A Dash of Love?
by freelancejouster
Summary: Set in the fifth year, if there had been no Umbridge. Snape gets called away to a conference and leaves teaching potion-making to a classmate of Tonks who feels it's necessary to ... stir things up. Eventual pairings: HP/DM, HG/RW
1. Chapter 1

Set in the fifth year, if there had been no Umbridge. Have been playing with the idea of a potion-centric fic for awhile now, and this is just the beginning of that coming to fruition.

As always, I own no part of the Harry Potter universe, I just enjoy playing with their lives.

* * *

Harry made his way quickly to the dungeons with Ron close behind him. It was a beautiful day in early September and both of them had been flying around the quidditch pitch with Ginny from the moment they woke up and they had lost track of time. They wheeled into the potions classroom and quietly took their seats in the back of the room beside Hermione.

"Where have you two been?" she hissed as Harry pulled his potions book from his bag.

"On the pitch," he said, remembering a particularly precise save that Ginny had made.

"You almost missed it," she said, turning back to the front of the classroom.

Harry looked up to figure out what "it" was and he saw Snape frowning at him. That in and of itself was not particularly unusual, however, he was accompanied by a very small, very young witch with hair that looked like the night sky - dark blue, almost black, with shimmers of purple in it. Something about her was slightly mesmerizing.

"As I was saying," said Snape, looking away from Harry, "I have been summoned to a conference in Bulgaria for the next two weeks. The conference is on potions and I expect that I will learn quite a lot from both the atmosphere and the conference itself. In my absence, the ... talented Miss Everett will be covering my classes." He gestured to the witch beside him who beamed and waved at the class. Snape sneered slightly before continuing. "She was the most talented witch in her year within the discipline of potions, has since made many strides within the profession of Healer at Saint Mungo's and was personally responsible for a more powerful, stronger, and better tasting version of Skelegrow just last year. I feel that several of you will benefit greatly under her instruction. Since the news of this conference reached me so last minute, I must make my leave today if I am going to make it to the conference on time. I leave you in her very capable hands."

He nodded vaguely in her direction before striding out of the classroom.

There was a slightly awkward silence before Miss Everett spoke. "Well then," she said with a toothy smile. "Since I know very little about you all and your potion making skills, I'd like to spend the next couple days trying your hands at varying difficulties of potions. So let me just ..." she trailed off and turned to the black board beside her. She whacked it once with her wand and Harry expected the instructions to appear on the board as they had so many times before.

However, nothing happened. A Slytherin on the other side of the room snickered.

Miss Everett leaned quite close to the blackboard, scrutinizing it, apparently. After a few moments and a few more snickers, she said, "Ah," and rapped her wand on the board twice. The board turned a vibrant purple, which Harry doubted she had done on purpose, but the instructions also appeared in a delicate scrawl upon it. Harry skimmed the directions and was glad that he found them to be quite simple. Perhaps he wasn't as bad at potions as Snape had led him to believe.

"Close enough," she said with a laugh, "you lot have until the end of class to finish this more or less simple potion. It's called the Fortification potion, and acts a bit like a good swig of Firewhiskey does on certain people. Just an extra boost of heartiness or courage, should one need it. All of you should complete this with little struggle. However, if you have any problems or questions or need anything at all really, please raise your hand! I'd rather help you with something during class than see a problem with your potion at the end."

Neville let out an audible sigh. Harry vividly remembered several times where Snape had made fun of Neville in front of the class for asking for something clarified and he smiled slightly to himself. Neville needed a break from that, after more than four years of that kind of treatment, Harry felt that it was safe to say that they all did. Except for perhaps Malfoy, who was off on the side of the room, scoffing towards Crabbe who was trying and failing to not look relieved.

Miss Everett smiled out at the room and said, "Alright, if you could all read carefully over the instructions before we begin, I'll wait a couple minutes to see if there's any questions."

Hermione's hand shot up, nearly piercing the air.

Miss Everett looked slightly bemused, but gestured towards Hermione, saying, "Yes, Miss ..."

"Granger," finished Hermione with a nod. "The potion looks simple enough, so my question isn't about that, actually. However, I did want to know what about this potion you thought could showcase our abilities rather than another?"

"Well Miss Granger," said Miss Everett, "I do think that this potion is simple enough that all of you in the class should be able to brew it without much struggle as fifth years, but there are a few small fiddly bits within the potion - such as a it necessitates the brewer to add two different ingredients at the exact same time in this third step, or here in the sixth step, that the brewer wait a full eighty-eight seconds without touching the potion or adding anything. While these directions are somewhat simple to follow, they're ... well, they're fiddly, and I believe that I can see who's not paying attention as well as perhaps they ought to be with this potion, without any particularly adverse effects."

Miss Everett seemed pleased with her answer, and Harry could see others around the room nodding in response to her statement. It did seem like good reasoning in choosing a potion. However, Hermione was not done, "What do you mean specifically by adverse effects?"

"Well, when brewing certain other potions, such as the Draught of the Living Dead or even the somewhat easy Bitter Drink, if the brewer were to screw up one of the more pivotal steps, some bad things could happen. These things could be mild, such as an acrid smell, or severe, such as turning into an actual poison or emitting a toxic gas."

This seemed to satisfy Hermione, because she nodded, and Miss Everett looked around the room, obvious signs of relief on her face. Later, Ron asked her why she had to go and do that on Miss Everett's first day and Hermione looked appalled that Ron would even ask her that. She claimed that she was just seeing if Miss Everett really was fit to teach them.

"Now, if anyone else has any questions ... no? Good! Please begin. Bring a small sample of your potion to my desk upon finishing and you may leave for the day. And remember, any questions, just ask!"

Harry got to work on his potion, getting a few ingredients from the cabinets and pulling out his potion kit.

"Did you have to ask a million questions?" Hissed Ron at Hermione as she pulled out some ingredients of her own.

She didn't look up from sorting her ingredients, "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Never ending questions!" exclaimed Ron, lighting his cauldron with his wand, "Don't you think it was a little ridiculous Harry?"

Harry looked up and saw that they were both looking directly at him, Ron's face perplexed and annoyed and Hermione's indignant. "I mean, sort of," Harry said, looking down.

"Yeah!" said Ron, clapping Harry on the back, "She said to ask questions if you were confused, you weren't confused Hermione!"

"Well excuse me," Hermione said, dropping a pair of bright yellow beans into her cauldron, "for trying to assess if this teacher that Snape seems to have plucked from nowhere is fit to teach us. I would think that you two ought to be a little more concerned about your education, and even your safety! I mean, Harry, what if she's some maniac that Snape has set here to poison you or something, it's not as though things like that haven't happened before."

Harry must have looked slightly sheepish, so Hermione stopped her rant, but when Harry turned to Ron he looked moderately terrified. Harry was just about to ask him what was wrong when he heard a voice behind him, "Don't worry, I haven't been sent by anyone."

Hermione had the good sense to look slightly ashamed, "No, I'm sorry, I didn't ... Honestly, I ..."

"No," said Miss Everett, "Don't be sorry, if my friend was the Great Harry Potter, I'd want to look out for him too. Tonks told me he might be in this class, and honestly that's one of the reasons I decided to take up Snape on his offer."

"You know Tonks?" asked Harry in surprise, turning to look at her. He supposed she was about the same age as Tonks.

"Yep, we were both Hufflepuff. She was in the year below me, but she made a great impression on me and we knew each other quite well for a time," said Miss Everett, rounding the desk. She made to continue her rounds of the room, "I hope to see good things from all of you." Her face was turned from them and the words themselves were kind, but for some reason they made Harry feel ever so slightly off, as if he were being drizzled on or possibly he'd stepped in puddle that was much deeper than he thought it'd be.

They finished up the lesson without much difficulty and Harry thought that he'd done quite well, honestly. Hermione's potion turned a pretty, blue grey, like an overcast sky and his was just a bit bluer than hers. Ron's was more of a slate grey, but not that far off, either. Even Neville's was a dark blue-grey, though his did seem quite a bit thicker than any of theirs. In fact, the person who seemed to have done the worst was not Neville, or even Crabbe, but Draco Malfoy, who had somehow ended up with a substance that was inky black but looked like water - Harry saw him grumbling to himself as he placed his vial of potion on Miss Everett's desk. Harry smiled to himself, quite tickled by the idea that Draco might be not excelling at something for once.

He, Ron, and Hermione left the dungeons all quite looking forward to their next potion class for the first time that any of them could remember.


	2. Chapter 2

As usual, I own no part of the Harry Potter series and I am making no profit from it. I'm very excited that the next installment has come along so smoothly! I didn't know if I was going to be able to pull this off with this fic, but I am attempting to keep a schedule of posting new chapters each Saturday, so look forward to that!

* * *

The weekend passed before their next potion lesson more or less uneventfully. Harry, Ron, and Hermione spent most of it in front of the fire, Harry and Ron playing round after round of wizard's chess while Hermione read furiously, sometimes reading "particularly interesting snippets" aloud to the boys who, to their credit, pretended to listen.

When they arrived in the potions classroom the next Monday, gone was the dreariness that Harry had always associated with the dungeons and with Snape. In place of the damp and the general dullness that usually permeated the classroom, were soft lights in a myriad of colors that floated slowly about on the ceiling, their work stations had been magicked a clean white, and small bouquets of soft blue, purple, and pink flowers were placed throughout the room to a slightly homey effect. While the decor was not particularly what Harry would have chosen, thinking instead of lush red and god tapestries and roaring fires, he had to admit that the small touches did have a massive effect on his mood. That, paired with Snape's absence and the Gryffindors were practically giddy.

Much to Harry's surprise, the Slytherin students also seemed to be slightly happier than usual - Crabbe and Goyle were telling jokes to Zabini and Malfoy was smiling softly to himself, smelling a flower that he'd pulled from one of the bouquets that Harry thought might have been a violet. There was something surprising, there, in the gesture. Something human Harry saw in Malfoy that he wasn't sure he'd ever seen before.

"Welcome everyone, I see you're all admiring the new decor!" said Miss Everett, smiling as she walked in the front of the classroom, "I thought I'd spruce things up a little bit, as I never could really concentrate in the dim back when I was a student. And if enough of you don't like it, then we'll figure out something else I suppose!"

She started a small lecture the many properties of powdered unicorn horn and how it should only be used sparingly and with extreme caution. "This is not one of those ingredients where you should add in an extra little pinch if you think you may have gone shy in your measuring. In fact, more often than not it might benefit someone still learning the exact pieces of the brewing skill to only add in two-thirds to three-quarters of the powder to begin with, then adding in small amounts until it has the desired effect."

Harry lost interest in the lecture, as nice as Miss Everett seemed, he wasn't sure anyone could make potions as riveting as he found Defense Against the Dark Arts, or even Charms class for that matter. He noticed Ron doodling on a spare scrap of parchment, Pavarti at the next table had charmed one of the flowers to float about her table, and across the room Malfoy was flicking idly through his textbook, looking completely zoned out. Maybe not having Snape in the room had made Malfoy less worried about not living up to his father's expectations.

Harry was drawn from his musings by Miss Everett saying, "Now, on to the brewing portion of our class period." She rapped the blackboard, still purple from last class, twice and it turned a vibrant blue, but the directions appeared in the same script as last time. "I'd like for all of you to brew this slightly more difficult potion than last time, a potion commonly called the "Fizzy Lifting" potion because of its ability to lift the drinker of the potion and it's penchant for making them burp! I'd like you all to brew the Levantanium potion and put a small amount in a vial for me on my desk when you're all done. Any questions before we begin?"

She looked slowly around the room, taking special care to look at Hermione, who to her credit blushed slightly, before she continued, "Alright, I've chosen this potion specifically because it's relatively simple, though it does have a few small fiddly bits like the potion from last time, and there are a few more dangerous ingredients this time around so do be careful and ask if you have any questions, please. One last thing before we start, I'm going to be calling you all up to the front for your grades on that potion from last time, so when you hear your name, please come to my desk. And ... begin!"

Harry skimmed over the directions on the blackboard, noticing that the substance she had been talking about previously, the powdered unicorn horn, was one of the ingredients to be added in the third to last step. He was glad that he had bothered to pay attention to that much of the lecture, at least. He pulled out his little bottle of it from his potions kit and peered at it through the glass, surprised both that it was a dull purple color and that something from a unicorn could be so volatile.

"Er, Hermione," said Harry, turning to the bushy-haired girl. She was rummaging through her potions kit, but looked up at once.

"What is it Harry?" she asked.

"This powdered unicorn horn, is it supposed to be this color?" He asked, holding up his jar and shaking it for her to inspect. Maybe he'd gotten an old batch or something.

"Yes, Harry, weren't you paying attention?" she asked and then continued without waiting for an answer, "Of course you weren't. Well, functional unicorn horn, or rather, unicorn horn for potions making has to be cut with this weird Venezuelan yam thing that's actually a bit like Mandrake, so as to be usable for most potions. If it was going to be the uncut unicorn horn, it would say, "Uncut" or "Pure" in the directions, since it's used that way for only two or three potions to my knowledge. No more than a small handful."

"Oh, okay," said Harry, relieved, "I'm just glad that mine's not gone bad or something."

"Yeah, that'd be just our luck," said Ron, lighting his cauldron.

They all worked on their potions for a few minutes before Harry heard Miss Everett calling his name. He was glad this potion didn't seem to have any time specific elements to it, because he wouldn't want to have to choose between listening to the teacher and completing his potion properly. He wove his way between the work stations to Miss Everett's desk.

"So, how'd I do?" he asked as he approached her.

"Quite well!" she replied, pulling a small bit of parchment from the top of the stack in front of her, "If you keep up this kind of performance for the next couple class periods, I'll be pleasantly surprised. Both fame and skill - quite a combination." She handed Harry the bit of parchment with his grade on it and he was delighted to see an O drawn in the same script as on the blackboard.

"Er, thanks!" said Harry, turning to go back to his potion. He made it about halfway back to his desk before he noticed Malfoy as he walked past the Slytherin desks, out of the corner of his eye, measuring out a small amount of brilliantly bright white powder from a jar marked with a hand-written label of "Powdered Unicorn Horn." He remembered how dangerous Miss Everett had described even cut powdered unicorn horn as and weighed that in his mind for a short moment against his general dislike for Malfoy. Perhaps a few days ago he would have walked past, but he remembered the look on Malfoy's face as he'd been smelling that violet earlier and something inside Harry made him stop.

"Hey, Malfoy!" said Harry, turning abruptly.

"Potter?" said Malfoy, who had been too surprised to summon the usual venom that they spoke to one another in.

"I don't think that's the right kind of powdered unicorn horn," said Harry.

"You think that I don't know what powdered unicorn horn looks like?" asked Malfoy. Harry saw a similar looking jar to the one he had in Malfoy's potion kit and reached for it as Malfoy continued, "How stupid do you think I ... oh," he finished as he saw the jar Harry held in front of him.

Malfoy's eyes flicked to both jars in front of him and then to Harry's face, a look that Harry had never seen before on his face. If he didn't know better, Harry might have thought he was embarrassed. "Well, thanks," Malfoy said after a moment.

"Er, you're welcome," said Harry, not really sure what else to say, having never really had a civil conversation with Malfoy before. He walked lamely to his seat and continued working on his own potion.

"So, how'd it go?" asked Ron when Harry'd sat back down.

"What?" asked Harry, thinking of Draco.

"What grade did you get?" Ron asked, pulling the piece of parchment from Harry's hand, "An O, I thought you might have. Your potion was nearly perfect. Hermione got one too and Neville and I ended up with Es, which is a right bit better than we usually get in potions class, so I'm not complaining. Today though, I don't know exa-"

Ron's rambling was cut off by a sharp explosion just to their left. When they looked they saw Neville looking quite put out, his face covered in powdered unicorn horn, and his cauldron giving off wave after wave of black smoke.

"What did you do!" cried Hermione, setting her stirring spoon down and starting towards him.

Neville opened his mouth to reply but seemed unable to speak.

"Are you alright?" asked Miss Everett, who had come practically running across the room, leaving the last few pieces of parchment fluttering to the ground behind her. She inspected his face carefully, asking, "Well, powdered unicorn horn does have some pretty beneficial properties when applied to the skin, so that'll be good, however, I am quite nervous that you've inhaled a good gust of it and this black smoke." She flicked her wand at his cauldron and the potion disappeared. "I'm afraid I'm going to have to give you a Dreadful on this potion for the time being as we get you up to see Madam Pomfrey, but if you write me a good fifteen inches on where you made a mistake and what you'd do differently next time, I don't see why you wouldn't be able to get an A or so, alright?"

Neville nodded, seemingly unable to speak and Miss Everett took him by the arm and out of the room to see Madam Pomfrey, calling behind her, "Please finish up your potions and place them on my desk when you've finished. For homework I'll need eighteen inches on the properties of powdered unicorn horn for Friday, that includes you Mr. Longbottom, don't make that face, let's go."

When she closed the door behind her, Ron complained, "Great, homework on top of finishing this fiddly potion. I thought she was going to be an easy teacher!"

"Honestly Ronald," said Hermione, giving him an admonishing look, "I don't know what gave you that idea. You should have plenty to write about!"

They continued to argue as they finished their potions and Harry smiled slightly, glad to see them getting along and arguing out of habit rather than anger. Both of them were smiling slightly as they stirred their potions and added the last few ingredients. They seemed almost inevitable to him, in the same way that eventually Hagrid would have another magical creature or that Dumbledore would say something both wise and strange.

Harry reflected quietly to himself, wondering if there was anyone out there for him. He'd thought Cho was kind of cute last year, but that was before ... well, he'd gotten to know Cedric better. He'd replayed Cedric saying that the prefect's baths were a good place for a bath more times than he could count in the week that followed with blushing cheeks. Even now, the loss of him stung a little, though nothing had ever happened between them. Harry wasn't even sure that he'd wanted anything to happen, or what he'd wanted to happen if it did, but ...

And there had been other boys, too. Dean Thomas for a couple days when he'd seen him holding Seamus's hand under the dinner table, Michael Corner for a couple weeks when he made a particularly impressive _Arresto Momentum_ charm on a paper airplane in one of Flitwick's classes last year ... Blaise Zabini who he'd caught staring at him for a long moment during a quidditch match ... but no one lately, he thought to himself. No one really.

He felt his ears turning pink and dropped a spoonful of dragonfly wings into his potion, the final ingredient, and his potion turned the same pink as his ears, just a shade or two lighter than Hermione's. She was scooping hers into a vial, but stopped to peer into Harry's. "Wow, Harry, that's actually really good! I'm impressed."

"Er, thanks," he said, running a hand through his hair and reaching for a vial of his own. He did think he'd done everything right that he could think of. Maybe he wasn't lousy at potions after all, maybe he'd just had a lousy teacher.

He expressed as much to Ron, who shrugged and said, "Maybe, mate, but we have a couple more days of easier potions, don't we?"

Harry nodded, but he was excited for the next lesson nonetheless.


	3. Chapter 3

One thing that could be said of Miss Everett, reflected Harry after the second week of Snape's absence, was that she kept true to her word of giving them increasingly difficult potions. Only Hermione was still thriving, the blue and green streaks from the latest potion looking more like war-paint than the wounds they felt like to Harry. Miss Everett was still greatly preferable to Snape, but it would have been nice to go back to the Fortification potion again, even if it wasn't particularly interesting.

That was something new, he supposed, he was finding the more difficult potions interesting and found himself spacing out far less often as they lessons passed. It seemed as though Miss Everett were pulling the oddest and most unique potions she could think of from her bag of tricks, rather than ones that would be particularly practical in a real world setting, which Harry wasn't complaining about. She reminded him of Luna in a way, in that she seemed unfailingly kind but more than just a little bit odd in the span of a few minutes.

The last potion, for instance, was one that Harry had never heard of before. It was called _Tadeas Tardi_ and its supposed effect was to make drinker of the potion perceive the world as having slowed down considerably. Harry wasn't sure what one would ever use it for besides maybe mid-quidditch game to get a better scan of the arena, or possibly mid-exam to get a bit more thinking time, but its methods of brewing were quite strange. For one, instead of the general few liters of boiling water that most potions started with, _Tadeas Tardi_ began by emptying two bottles of Butterbeer into the cauldron and never letting the mixture get any hotter than a simmer. Additionally, it used a few ingredients that Harry had never used before, including a small berry that looked very similar to a blueberry, but that would bolt as far as it could when touched at all, leaving a bright blue streak behind it wherever it went and a plant that looked a little like a cross between spinach and pea pods that seemed to float about as if enchanted, but was not to be charmed at all lest its properties be marred and needed to be hand-crushed above the potion to release the necessary juices.

No one left the class without blue and green stripes all over their arms and hands, and Neville (who had only needed to stay in the infirmary overnight) and Crabbe both left with considerable blue on their faces as well.

"I'm not sure how much more of this I can take," complained Ron as he sank into one of the chairs before the fire in the Gryffindor common room and running a blue and green hand through his ginger hair.

"Are you saying you'd rather have Snape back?" asked Hermione, stretching out on the couch where Crookshanks, appearing from beneath the couch, promptly jumped upon her and curled up on her stomach.

"Merlin, no," replied Ron, alarmed that she would even say such a thing, "I just wish she'd tone it down a bit, you know. Give us a bit of a break."

"Maybe with the group project coming up, we'll better be able to split the work load," said Hermione.

"Wait, what group project?" asked Harry peering up at her.

"The group project next week," said Hermione, turning towards the boys. She looked from Harry's blank face to Ron's blank face and sighed. "Of course you don't know about the group project, don't either of you ever listen in class?"

"Not really," said Ron with a begrudging smile.

Hermione straightened up, startling Crookshanks from her, and started to explain. Apparently Miss Everett had announced at the end of last week that they were going to have an extended group project where they worked in pairs on a quite difficult and strange potion together. This potion would take several weeks and would require work done outside of class as well. "I do hope I'm paired with one of you two," said Hermione, "Or at least a Gryffindor. I'm not sure how much work I could expect a Slytherin to do on our project, and I don't want to do poorly because of their sour attitudes."

"She's got to pair us within house," said Harry, "Doesn't she?"

"Doubt it," said Ron sullenly, kicking at the air for emphasis, "She'd think it was hilarious to set us up at complete random or divide us all between houses or something."

Harry looked to Hermione for reassurance, but all she did was shrug. Harry always felt twice as nervous when Hermione didn't know the answer to something. He wasn't sure that he'd dislike being paired with a Slytherin as much as he once would have, the image of Malfoy's embarrassed face popping unbidden to his mind, but he also wasn't sure he was ready to completely bury the hatchet just yet. Of course he remembered all of the terrible things that Malfoy and his friends had done to them, remembered all of the terrible things they had called Hermione ...

But he knew that people could change, too.

The next potions classes started with a lot of grumbling as the students looked around the classroom and confirmed that at least they weren't the only ones who hadn't been able to get rid of the blue and green streaks that the ingredients from the _Tadeas Tardi_ had left on them. Draco looked especially put out, though he had only a few blue streaks up his arms and green-stained hands. Any amount of stain upon him was apparently undignified.

"Oh!" exclaimed Miss Everett when she entered the classroom, "Perhaps I should have told you all that a bit of lemon and salted soda water will get those stains right out!"

The classmates looked at each other to commiserate in their teacher's absent minded-ness, Ron pulling a face at Harry, while she continued, "Today's lesson is going to focus on the healing properties of poison, and yes, you heard that correctly. Moonseed poison, in particular has been used in very small doses within other potions, such as the Water-breathing potion and even an earlier version of what's come to be known as Skelegro ... "

Harry's attention drifted and he found himself wishing there were windows in the dungeon that he could look out of. Even with the improvement of Miss Everett's décor, Harry found the dungeon quite boring. He ended up looking at a vase of flowers that was on the table next to his, inspecting the petals. In the center of the bouquet he spotted a pair of violets and Harry's mind went back to Malfoy smelling that violet absently over a week ago now and the soft smile that had played on his lips. He wondered what Malfoy had been thinking about when that small smile crept onto his face.

Ron nudged him and whispered, "What are you smiling about?"

It was only then that Harry realized that his face had molded into the same smile that Malfoy had had when smelling the violet. Harry shook his head quickly, smile dropping from his face but a slight heat raising in his cheeks and whispered, "Nothing."

"Would you two pay attention?" Hermione hissed, leaning towards them.

Ron sighed and turned to the front of the room where Miss Everett was rounding down the lesson. "As a reminder, make sure that you never touch the moonseed poison directly because as concentrated as it is, it will very likely bore a hole straight through you, and I can't really think of anything worse that that! With that in mind, does anyone have any questions before we begin? Okay, then I'd like you all to know that there are some timed bits in the process of this potion and a lot of fiddly little stirs, so I'll be walking around and handing out grades from the last assignment and your paper from last week, but pay attention to the potion first and foremost!" She rapped her wand twice on the bright green board and it turned to the original black that it had been, and then she said, "Begin!"

Harry looked at the blackboard somewhat perplexed, though the instructions were in the same handwriting as usual, they were much more extensive than he had ever seen before.

Ron was reading aloud beside him, "Stir twice counter clockwise, seventeen times clockwise, five times counter clockwise, pause for sixty seconds, and then seven times clockwise with a long-handled wooden spoon... how do you think they even figured out these numbers in the first place? This whole potion looks made up."

Even Hermione looked somewhat perplexed but was lighting the fire beneath her cauldron diligently, "No idea," she said in response to Ron, "But apparently it'll give us the Extended Memory potion, so I suppose we'll have to follow it to the letter." She sighed and plopped a spoonful of ashwinder scales into the potion, which then began to give off soft puffs of red smoke.

Harry got to work brewing his own potion, first adding the ashwinder scales and admiring the red smoke that rose from it, then adding four dried aconite blossoms which turned the potion a deep purple. He began the first strange set of stirs, and as he was keeping careful count, mused that there was something very therapeutic about potion-making when Snape wasn't breathing down his neck. He allowed himself to be lulled by the steady slosh of his potion and the deliberateness in which he was allowed to follow the directions. Harry didn't need to focus on anything else, all he needed to focus on was counting out this bit ... measuring this bit ... timing this bit ...

It was calming, almost, to pour all of his focus into just doing this.

And while that was true, Harry should have been paying perhaps just a bit more attention to what he was doing rather than focusing on the idea of making a potion, because as he reached the last step and grabbed for the tiny bottle of moonseed poison, he bumped it from his work station where it cracked upon the ground. Not thinking, he bent down to scoop it up. Fingers inches from the cracked bottle, globules of poison beading the edges, a hand on his arm pulled him back.

Harry would have expected Ron or Hermione or even Neville to have stopped him from his mistake, but all of them had turned to stare at him in alarm and confusion. Instead of any of them, Draco Malfoy's hand was on his arm. "What in Merlin's name are you doing, Potter?" said Malfoy, sounding alarmed rather than disdainful.

"I was just ..." Harry didn't now how to finish his sentence, though. The actual end of it, "Going to pick up the bottle" was stupid, because he knew now, thinking about it, that had he touched the bottle, the poison would have bored into his skin and he'd have had to spend quite a bit of time in the infirmary. "Thanks," he said quietly, embarrassed.

"Yeah," said Malfoy with a nod. It was then that they both became acutely aware that Malfoy's hands were still gripped tightly around Harry's forearm, where he'd pulled Harry back. His fingers, pale and stained blue and green from the last potion, contrasted oddly against Harry's own sun-tanned skin. Malfoy pulled away quickly and spat, "Be more careful," before turning and continuing on his trek to the cupboard in the corner of the room.

Harry's table was silent for a moment before Ron said, "What do you think's gotten into Malfoy? Do you reckon he wants something?"

"Ron that's terrible!" said Hermione, swatting at him, "He's just saved Harry!"

"Well, yeah," said Ron, "Obviously that's great but ... why'd he do it? I saw him there and figured he was going to push Harry into the poison if anything."

"I mean, it's lucky he did save me, I guess," said Harry running a hand through his hair.

"Even Malfoy's not that much of a prat," said Hermione, bending to put a portion of her potion in a vial for grading. She then added, "At least not anymore."

"You don't think so?" asked Ron.

Harry shook his head, "He seems less ... I don't know, malicious for sure without Snape here."

That seemed to settle the matter, but as Harry carefully finished his potion he couldn't help but remember the feeling of Malfoy's fingers wrapped around his arm, the way Malfoy's skin had felt on his. As they were leaving the classroom some minutes later, he could still feel them there and rubbed the thumb of his opposite hand over the spot, wondering absently why his chest felt so tight.

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Look for the next chapter next Saturday and comment on what you think will happen next!


	4. Chapter 4

Harry woke slowly the next morning, body emerging slowly from the pleasant world of sleep and dreams that he forgot the moment he left it. He knew that they had been nice, peaceful dreams, despite having no memory of them. He stirred and reached for his glasses on the side table and peered around the room, where he saw Ron pulling a red sweater over his head, ginger hair sticking up in all directions.

Ron glanced over, having heard him moving around, and said, "Oh good, you're up. I was just about to wake you."

Harry groaned and sat up, stretching before getting out of his bed and leaving the covers as they were. He wasn't really one to make his bed, even when he'd slept in the cupboard beneath the stairs, he'd left his blankets in a tangle and pushed to one side.

When they'd both dressed they went down the stairs to the common room, neither of them bothering to brush their hair, and met Hermione who sighed when she saw them but led the way out of the common room and down to breakfast anyway.

Harry had always found something about the great hall at breakfast time very comforting. It bustled in a much more subdued way than the great hall at dinner or even lunch, everyone chatting sleepily and finishing up the last bits to their assignments over eggs and toast. That, coupled with the morning light filtering in from the charm on the ceiling, and it almost seemed as though sitting at the Gryffindor table was akin to getting a soft, blanketed hug.

Sleepily, as he took sporadic bites at his piece of toast while Ron shoveled in his eggs beside him, Harry surveyed the great hall slowly. A trio of Hufflepuff were blowing bubbles down the length of their table. He wondered to himself if the bubbles were a product from Fred and George as they lasted unusually long and when they finally did pop they made a very specific and high pitched noise. At the Ravenclaw table, Luna was perched upon the table rather than the chairs and was eating a bowl of porridge rather serenely. And then Harry's gaze got to the Slytherin table and in his survey of it, he caught Draco Malfoy's uncanny grey eyes with his own. A small part of him wanted to smile, but that part of him was not known for its good judgement. After a moment Malfoy nodded not unpleasantly, so Harry did the same before looking away. That was probably better, not smiling, he thought to himself, and he continued to tell himself that.

Thinking about Malfoy was a strange sort of thing for Harry. In the past, Harry had thought countless horrible things about Malfoy, because, well, he'd done countless horrible things. A bitter taste flooded Harry's mouth as he remembered Ron's initial reaction to Malfoy helping him, that he wanted something from him or that he was using him in some way. And perhaps that was accurate, maybe Malfoy had had a terrible motive behind his recent pleasant actions. The more Harry thought about it, the more likely that seemed.

As far back as Harry could remember, Malfoy had been practically malicious. Malfoy'd spied on him and Ron and Hermione the first year with the sole purpose of getting them in trouble and managing to have Hagrid get rid of Norbert in the process; setting a snake on him in their duel in second year; calling Hermione that terrible name ...

No, of course Harry shouldn't be thinking about him like this, shouldn't be pleased when Malfoy nods at him across the great hall, shouldn't keep thinking about the way Malfoy's fingers felt around his arm. Of course Malfoy was trying to convince Harry to trust him, it all had to be an act.

But by their next potions class Harry still hadn't managed to convince himself that it was all an act, remembering the soft way he'd smiled while smelling the violet he'd plucked from the vase. There was no way that Malfoy could have known that Harry had been watching him, then, but had still seemed so much softer and ungaurded than he had in years past.

"You know he's not always up to something," said Hermione's voice in Harry's ear, startling him and causing him to nearly fall from his chair. Lavender looked over from her table beside them and frowned disapprovingly.

"I know that he's been up to something a lot in the past," said Harry quietly when he'd straightened himself out.

"Maybe he's genuinely trying to turn over a new leaf," said Hermione, voicing what Harry a small part of Harry had been desperately hoping.

"Maybe," allowed Harry, "but how are you so quick to trust him?"

"Trust him?" asked Hermione incredulously, "Not hardly. I just don't want to be one of those people who always thinks the worst of others. And if he ends up still being the annoying prat that he's always tried to be ... well, we've dealt with that before, we can deal with it again."

"My money's on him being a prat," said Ron from beside them.

Hermione laughed and looked at Ron for a few moments too long before turning back to the front of the classroom where Miss Everett was apparently mid-lesson, though Harry didn't remember any of what she'd been talking about.

She continued, "Now this last type of potion is the one that we'll be focusing on today in particular, but you should all be aware of it for the future as well. They're called verbal potions, in that one or more ingredients within them are to do with telling the potion things. These things can be a large variety of things - there's a confidence potion that requires that you play it several Weird Sisters songs, a sleeping potion that needs to be sung lullabies by the brewer of the potion, and an odd, mostly retired potion, that makes the drinker feel as though they're not hungry for several days at a time that requires the brewer to read a grocery list to it.

"The potion that we'll be brewing today is the Cackling potion, which makes the drinker laugh whenever they attempt to speak. Now, to accomplish this, one of the ingredients is to tell the potion jokes at various steps throughout the brewing process. Now, I know this is a bit peculiar, so does anyone have any questions?" Hermione raised her hand slowly. "Yes Miss Granger?"

"I've never heard of this type of potion before and I'm wondering how exactly we make it so that the potion is able to absorb the jokes and/or differentiate between a joke directed at it and someone else or another potion?" said Hermione carefully.

"Well," said Miss Everett, leaning against the desk at the front of the classroom, "to answer the first part of your question, the key to ensuring that the potion absorbs the verbal parts of the potion is to cast _Audira_ above the potion in a clockwise stirring motion so that it will listen to what you say. This spell is very short lived on potions and will dissapate soon enough that you will not need to cast cease spell on it. the potion should glow a soft yellow while the spell is active. As for the second part of your question, there's not really a way for the potion to know whether your joke is aimed at it or someone else in the room, but it should absorb all jokes told within the short time that it's active. Now, does anyone else have any questions?"

No one raised their hands, so Miss Everett tapped on the board and the directions appeared. "You may all begin - at the end of class, I'll announce the partners for the group project!"

"Fred and George would love this potion," said Ron as he pulled out his potions kit.

"Now, do they actually tell jokes or do they just mess around all the time?" asked Hermione lighting her cauldron.

"Well they've definitely told jokes before," said Ron, scratching at his chin with is wand, "There was one summer when they were about ten when they tried to speak in nothing but riddles."

"And how did that go?" asked Harry.

"Well, it was a very long summer, honestly," said Ron, "Mum made them stop after a few weeks. I think she was a little impressed, though she wouldn't admit it, and that's why she didn't have them stop sooner."

Harry laughed softly and ran a hand through his hair, "I wonder if there's like a list of approved jokes or something. What if the potion doesn't think I'm funny?"

"Well then I suspect it won't work very well," said Hermione with a smile.

Ten minutes later, with only a small explosion from Pansy Parkinson's table to distract them - they heard Zabini yelling something about her grabbing the wrong bottle - they'd all reached the joke-telling portion of the potion. Ron looked first to Harry and then to Hermione uneasily.

"So we just ... tell it a joke?" he asked.

"I mean," said Hermione reaching for her wand, "it seems pretty straightforward." She circled her wand carefully over her gently boiling potion and said, " _Audira._ " As Miss Everett had told them, the potion milky-looking potion began to give off a faint yellow glow. Hermione smiled to herself, before saying her joke, "How many wizards does it take to change a light bulb? None, wizards don't use electricity!"

Harry smiled slightly and Hermione's potion pulsed gently, but Ron looked confused and whispered to Harry, "What's a light bulb exactly?"

Harry shook his head, and whispered back, "I'll tell you later, mate." Ron nodded.

"Your turn then," said Hermione to Ron, gesturing at his potion.

"Right," said Ron, nodding, and cleared his throat. " _Audira._ What do you call a dog owned by a vampire? A blood hound." Hermione made a face, but Ron's potion pulsed slightly, so the joke must have taken.

"Well you go then Harry," said Ron with a frown.

"Right, well," said Harry. Being the last to go he felt quite put on the spot and he didn't think that he knew any jokes, which of course he then found ridiculous because what kind of person doesn't know any jokes. After a short moment, he remembered a joke that Dudley had told them when they were quite small and didn't yet treat each other poorly. After casting _Audira_ Harry said, "What kinds of wizards can jump higher than a mountain? All of them, mountains can't jump!"

For a short second he was worried that the joke was so bad that the potion wouldn't accept it, but then it pulsed as all the others had and they all continued on with the rest of their potions. Everyone else in the classroom seemed to have thought of the same odd and somewhat lame jokes and so the trio didn't feel quite as embarrassed as they might have, though Harry did overhear Parvarti telling a quite elaborate joke about a ghoul, a vampire, and a wand-maker that had Lavender in stitches at only half-way through.

As they all finished up the potions, Miss Everett called their attnention to the front of the classroom, "You all should be almost done by now, and I see that I have a few containers on my desk from those of you who have already finished their potions, so before you all leave I'd like to announce the partners for the group project that we'll be starting in class tomorrow." She began reading off the names and Harry was surprised to find that the groups were an odd mixture - Zabini and Lavender, Parvarti and Neville, Pansy and Goyle and then she said Ron's name, "Ron Weasley and ... oh, Hermione Granger, and let's see, that leaves just Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy!"

Harry's eyes windened and met Malfoy's across the room - who looked at least as shocked as Harry felt.


	5. Chapter 5

**Hope everyone who celebrates Thanksgiving had a great time with their families and ate way too much - and I hope everyone else ate way too much by themselves just doing life. I just wanted to warn that the next chapter might not be out right on time, I've been so busy with the holidays and rounding finals that I'm not as on schedule as I have been in the past. Thanks for understanding!**

* * *

Harry finished his day with a pit in the middle of his stomach. It didn't feel exactly like he was sick, though he did feel a little nauseous and Hagrid pulled him aside when they had Care of Magical Creatures later that day and asked if he thought he might need to lie down because he was looking awfully pale. It didn't feel exactly like he'd been punched, though there was something of an ache to the pit, as though the mild pain from it were permeating his body - his fingers felt stiff and strange, even. And it didn't feel exactly like butterflies, though it did feel as though there were something doing flips in his stomach, and he felt that he was breaking out in a sweat whenever he thought too much about his being paired with Malfoy.

"I mean, do you think you could ask her to switch? Or maybe she made a mistake," said Ron, later when they were all seated in front of the fire in the Gryffindor common room, charms homework spread out on the table in front of them.

"You think?" asked Harry lamely, daring to be hopeful because a change in the prospects of this potions project might do something to alleviate the pit in his stomach. Ron's reaction, if anything, had made the pit in his stomach sour even more.

"Well, no," said Ron with a commiserating smile, "but I thought it might be nice to say."

"Oh, thanks man," said Harry.

"I mean, do you think she put much thought into it? Partnering you up with Malfoy?" asked Ron.

Harry honestly didn't know and hadn't really thought about her motives at all. He shrugged, "Maybe she's trying to encourage school unity or something."

"She probably thinks you fancy him," said Hermione, peering up from behind her Charms book.

Harry was so surprised that Hermione had said that that he jerked in his chair and his own Charms book fell to the floor. Ron, beside him, seemed to either be doing some sort of impromptu mime act or was choking on his own tongue.

"Oh, I didn't say that you did, idiots," continued Hermione, with a frown to show that she was disapproving of their reactions to what she thought was a reasonable suggestion. "I'm just saying that she probably sees you staring at him all the time and drew the reasonable conclusion that you fancy Draco Malfoy. Oh, come on, it's not as though you're subtle about staring at him. No matter how closely you watch him, he's not _always_ up to something, you know, and especially this year he seems to be turning over somewhat of a new leaf."

"I was going to say," said Ron, righting himself and rubbing his chin, "that's a bit of a stretch, but I do think you might be on to something."

"So you think I fancy Malfoy too, now?" shot Harry back, suddenly angry that they had somehow known the thoughts he'd been having these last couple weeks. The pit in his stomach seemed to be growing

"Neither of us are saying that," Hermione said matter-of-factly, "we're saying it wouldn't be particularly strange is Miss Everett came to that conclusion from watching you!"

While what Hermione had said didn't exactly _not_ make sense, part of him still wanted to be angry - so he clenched his jaw, dropped his Charms book onto the table, and left out the portrait of the fat lady. He heard Hermione say something about him having his knickers in a twist and Ron laugh. Harry knew that he'd come back later, slightly sheepish, and that they'd let him easily back into the fold without more than a few words, but he needed some time away.

He found himself several moments later walking along the edge of the Great Lake, something about its vastness and inevitableness had had a way of calming him lately - it was always there, so perhaps he could continue on and get past this, whatever this was.

Harry thought about how Ron's initial reaction had been that Harry should see if he could switch partners. Of course that's what Ron would think, though, that was completely reasonable - of course Harry Potter should hate Malfoy and not want to be around him. But Ron's reasoning just made Harry feel even more lousy and uncomfortable than he had at the partnering to begin with. Even if a small part of him _did_ want to partner up with Malfoy, spend more time with him ... his friends would never understand, would only ever make jokes that they found completely ridiculous and far-fetched about the prospect.

And it's not as though he wanted to convince them otherwise, or even as though he wanted them to change - he just wished that everything could be just a little bit less hard.

Harry kicked at a pebble and sighed and had a passing thought about just walking into the Great Lake, stand with his head just barely submerged, and stay there perpetually and not have to deal with any of this, this whole strange situation.

He resolved, instead, to try to not think about it and made his way back up the hill and to the castle.

Things were more or less back to normal between Harry and the rest of the trio by the time that their next potion lesson rolled around, and they had even all walked to class together, Harry and Hermione nodding sympathetically along with Ron's latest rant about fair-weather Chudley Cannons fans. Apparently, Ernie Macmillian had started it, by attempting to start a conversation with Ron about them at breakfast, and neither Harry nor Hermione were sure if there was anything in particular that they could do to finish it.

Harry had purposely avoided looking over at the Slytherin table at breakfast so as to not meet Malfoy's eyes, because that could lead to nothing but thinking about the pit in his stomach that had only sort of subsided over the last couple days of purposely not thinking about it.

Ron's rant eventually was called to a close by Miss Everett asking them all to turn their attention to her, please. "Today we'll be going over exactly which potion will be brewed during this extended project and then we will be moving on to a bit of actual brewing, so you'll all partner up! Now, the name of this potion is _Amoriscosa._ Can anyone tell me which type of potion this is exactly? Miss Brown?"

Lavender sat up straighter and with an excited smile said, "It's a love potion!"

"Very good!" said Miss Everett and continued on with her lecture.

"A love potion?" whispered Hermione to herself beside Harry, "is she serious?"

"What do you mean?" asked Harry, turning towards her.

"Well it's just that that's really dangerous - and being that this is an extended, out of class project, there's no real way for her to regulate or ensure that we don't misuse it," said Hermione with a frown. "I've not heard much about _Amoriscosa_ , which isn't surprising because I've never really had any interest in love potions and everything she seems to be teaching us is incredibly obscure, but if it's anything like _Amortentia_ , this can't be good news."

" _Amortentia_?" asked Ron, leaning in.

"Yeah, it's the most powerful love potion in the world," said Hermione somberly, turning back towards Miss Everett's lecture.

"Surely she's kidding," said Ron quietly beside him. "A love potion can't be dangerous."

"I don't know, mate," replied Harry, thinking of the _Imperio_ curse they'd learned about last year under Barty Crouch Jr. pretending to be Moody, and thinking that maybe love potions worked in a similar way. Maybe it was just a legal way of making someone do what you wanted them to.

They tuned back into Miss Everett's lecture. She was pacing the front of the classroom somewhat erratically and gesturing about wildly, much more excited and expressive than she had been in any of their previous lessons. Harry noticed that while she was like this, her face contorting excitedly, that she even looked a bit like Tonks and wondered absently if Tonks hadn't chosen some of the features on the face she used most often from Miss Everett.

"Now, as some of you can probably tell from the name, _Amoriscosa_ is a somewhat archaic relation to the more common _Amortentia_ , some scholars even call them second cousins due to the combination of them both being love potions and them both giving off some sort of smell when completed - _Amortentia_ smells like the things that most attract you, mine smells like baking apples, sea salt, and that sort of crisp smell just before it snows. _Amoriscosa,_ alternatively, gives off a sort of heady perfume that seems to smell the same to everyone - sort of like cinnamon and vanilla with a sort of darker note below it that doesn't smell unlike moonseed.

"Now, this potion that I've chosen for this extended project is a bit like our last potion in that it requires some verbal elements. However, it is unlike our last potion in that this potion requires a few different types of verbal elements. This potion, being a love potion, needs to be sung to at midnight, under the moon. Through an open window will do, but please do not do so through a closed window."

Pansy Parkinson was raising her hand, so Miss Everett called on her. "You can't really expect us to sing to it at midnight, can you?" Pansy asked, nose high in the air and a sneer on her face, looking remarkably like Malfoy had when Harry had first met him.

"I can and do expect you to follow the potion's guidelines to the best of your ability," replied Miss Everett firmly. "I do wish to remind you that you are being graded on this potion, and that this potion itself is worth nearly as much as all of our previous potions combined, given the amount of work that this will entail. Yes, Mister Zabini?"

"When is Professor Snape coming back, I thought that he had said something about only being gone for two weeks - it's been nearly three already, and now you're talking about an extended potion?" said Zabini, his dark eyes flashing.

"Ah, yes," said Miss Everett, running a hand through her hair. "I did mean to mention that we've been conversing quite a bit over the last week or so, apparently Professor Snape impressed a certain giantess when he attended that conference and he has been asked to work with a few others on a special project, since he seems to have some kind of extensive background in both tweaking existing potions and creating his own from scratch.

"Anyway," she continued, "the other verbal element of this potion is that you tell it secrets about yourself. The secrets needn't be anything naughty or love-based, even, just things that you don't normally talk about, things you haven't told many people, things you're admitting to yourself."

Harry felt as though even people across the room could hear his heart pounding. Of course this potion made you whisper your deepest secrets to it. Of course.

"Now," said Miss Everett, "If you could all pair up with your partners, I think we'll begin the first bit of this potion in the last few minutes of the class period."

Harry saw Malfoy glance at him from across the room, and Harry walked slowly over to him, far less than excited now at the prospect of working on this project with Malfoy, knowing that it was a love potion that would contain all of his secrets.


End file.
